Saturday night Major League Baseball announced its latest Top 100 Prospects list. Shohei Ohtani was named baseball's top prospect, which was no surprise. He's the next Babe Ruth after all. What was a surprise was the absence of many Red Sox prospects. This is the first time that the impact of last off-season's trades hit home for me. With 30 major league teams, the law of averages says we should expect to see the Red Sox with one prospect in the top 30, one more in the top 60, and one more in the top 90. But there were no Red Sox prospects to be found in the top 30. Nor were there any in the top 60. Instead, here's how and where the Red Sox were represented.
Third baseman Michael Chavis was the #79 ranked prospect. His bat has been showing lots of pop in the minor leagues. But he's blocked from the bigs by Rafael Devers who appears to have third base claimed for a long time into the future. Perhaps Chavis will continue to show promise in the higher minor leagues, enough to be attractive trade bait at some point.
Pitcher Jason Groome was the #85 ranked prospect. You never hear about pitchers being blocked to the majors because you can never have enough good pitching. Groome was only 3-9 last year, and has yet to pitch even one inning at AA ball. But somebody must know something for him to make the list. Hopefully, we see him in Fenway in the next couple of years.
So that's it. The Red Sox had two minor leaguers represented, and both well down the list. MLB has what they call "prospect points" which is the metric they use to compare the prospects of the major league clubs against each other. Boston was tied for 5th worst. It's a good thing the big league club in Boston is young and talented, which will hopefully give the farm system time to replenish.
There were a couple more on the Top 100 list who were in the Boston system until recently.
Pitcher Michael Kopech was at #10. He was of course part of the Chris Sale deal last year with the Chicago White Sox. Even with Kopech's high ranking, I'd make that same trade over and over again.
Pitcher Anderson Espinoza was ranked #89. He was in the Drew Pomeranz trade with the San Diego Padres. Again, I'd make that same trade today too.
That's the first time I've seen anyone rank Chavis ahead of Groome. As weird as it is only seeing those two in the prospects list, we also have to take into account we have 5 projected regulars age 25 and under (all younger than Aaron Judge, I may add!) Prospects may me few, but young talent is right up there with the best of them!
ReplyDelete